It's a good thing I wasn't a member of the focus group for this during product development, because it would have been very hard to keep from making cracks about the image of reusing foil that only has a few wrinkles and/or no sauce touching it and packaging it back up for some new sucker consumer to buy.
The girls are activity-less this summer: no gymnastics, no summer camps, no swimming lessons... just The Move and After the Move to look forward to. (Lucky them!) In the meantime, we've attended Camp Dillow-Karahalis this week, with an activity every day except Monday. We've had our traditional playgroup/picnic, a visit to the Theater in the Woods at Wolf Trap, custard at The Dairy Godmother (and the added bonus of seeing where President Obama sat last weekend—sounds cheesy, but they actually did a great job doctoring up the chair!), and today, the Folklife Festival on the Mall. We only tackled a small portion of it (Wales) and could easily go back for more. It is huge.
Some photos from our Welsh adventure:
Poor little Ffraid (that's the Welsh form of Bridget), relegated to the violinist role.
Hee hee, these poor Welsh people, relegated to cut-outs in Washington D.C.
In the long list of weird things I never dreamed I'd say or do before having children, this one might top the list: being interviewed by Voice of America, China, while my children contributed to the making of a paper-mâché sheep. This has to win the award, right?
Oh, Bridget was COVERED in paper-mâché goop when she was done. Covered. Great idea to stop there first!
Next we stopped to listen to a Welsh jazz quartet who took traditional Welsh music and turned it into somewhat dark but interesting jazz music. One of the numbers began with a poem read in both English and Welsh, accompanied by a muted trumpet and a flute. How many people think Uncle Ben is playing the drums? Yeah, we did too. It was eerie.
There were many stations to wander around looking at—clog makers, book binders, print setters, gardeners, storytellers, boat makers, stone wall builders, home construction examples...
Here is a stone wall—I can't imagine the effort it must have taken to GET all this stuff here from the UK, and then get it all built/made/displayed for the festival.
This was my favorite part—this storyteller telling the tale of Taliesin. He was good.
There was a cool display of Welsh language children's books with little stools to sit and look at them.
This was probably Bridget's and Gracie's favorite part (if you don't count the Welsh ice cream we had). Bridget liked it so much she stole a book when we left. Deb escorted her back to return it : )
Hwyl! (Cheers!)
Dear Juliette,
I love the videos your mama posts of you dancing! Maddie, Gracie and I have watched them over and over and over again. They just don't get old. Where'd you get that "fight" move? We like to do that now too, and it never ceases to make us giggle hysterically.
I can dance too! My mama and daddy took us to the Columbia Pike Blues Festival on Saturday and I got to dance in the middle of the street. I know it's just a picture and not a video, but I think you can tell what a good dancer I am. Especially when I eat funnel cake and potato chips—and only funnel cake and potato chips—for dinner.
Love, Bridget
another spring adventure to the left...
Scene: Gracie and Maddie are taking a bath together while I finish getting Bridget to bed. When I come upstairs, there is a larger than allowable amount of water on the floor outside the tub.
Me: Girls, why is there so much water outside the tub?
Maddie: I didn't doooooooo iiiiiiiiiiiit, it was GRAAAAAAAACie. (is that how you type a whiny pass-the-buck statement?)
Gracie, in her smuggest, most righteous voice: Maddie is responsible for it, because she is seven. She knows better, but I'm only four and a half.
That Gracie. What a monkey...
Today was Maddie's last day of school. This photo was taken in May, actually—she did not look nearly so happy at the end of the day today. It was a difficult day for her; goodbye to her beloved first grade teacher, her school library, her principal, her other teachers, her bus driver, the building, her friends... not just the "see you in the fall" variety of goodbye that everyone else shared, but the "goodbye, so long" variety. I'm not sure there is anything I can say that will make her feel less sad about it, because it is simply a sad thing. I completely understand. I've been there—leaving Great Falls High School on the last day of teaching there for five years was one of the hardest goodbyes I've ever experienced.
Today was a difficult day for me, too. One example of a hundred examples: when one of the Bolivian grandmas gave me, Bridget and Gracie a big hug today at the bus stop after realizing that we won't be back in the fall, I think I startled her with my small, awkward outburst of fighting back tears. I'm not really that good at the clean wrap-up of an experience, despite having had many opportunities to practice these last 14 years. How will we ever find another Rosario to greet us every morning and afternoon? To cluck at me when I forget Bridget's sweatshirt on a cool day? To encourage our varying degrees of Spanish speaking? We won't. The same goes for any number of people we've become friends with at the bus stop or at school over the past two years. Eventually we will once again be comforted by the age-old military family truth: had the Air Force not plunked us down in Virginia, we never would have met any of these people who have become such an important part of us in the first place. This week, though, we're just not ready for reason. This week, it's just too sad.
Maddie and I worked on a mix CD to present to her teacher today as an end-of-the-year gift. I'm glad we did, because whenever we let music take on even more meaning, it will help carry us through.
Once in a while I get a bee in my bonnet about the possibility of one day opening up a small photography business. I'm realizing I usually feel this way directly following a family photo shoot with the Karahalises... Here are just a few of the 137 keepers we got last week at Netherlands Carillon—I got lots of good traditional portraits but I sure do like these : )
watch out, boys...
Scary Tae Kwon Do faces; don't be fooled by Thea, as she can knock your block clean off.
little woodland creatures
Thank you for playing along, dear Karahalises!
Today was the last day for Gracie's and Bridget's gymnastics classes (Maddie's last class is next Saturday). It's hard to express just how much these girls love gymnastics—all three of them would go every single day of the week if we let them. Gracie started gymnastics at Barcroft two years ago; she is pals with all the teachers now and we've heard more than once that she could be a candidate for team training—she is wired for the sport in every possible way. For now, we're sticking to the hobbyist approach to gymnastics with her, and keeping her away from Béla Károlyi. Bridget just started this past session after being dragged to class after class (first in a carseat, then trapped in the mezzanine viewing area) for almost two years. She spontaneously yells out "FUN!" during class on a regular basis, accompanied by a near-hysterical giggle of glee. And it is FUN! to help her through all the activities, with the exception of the vault pit, perhaps. Have you ever tried to climb out of a gymnastics vault pit? It isn't pretty.*
Bridget had no problem marching up to the top of the mat for the ribbon ceremony today. She had to be escorted down, actually.
This is a far cry from Gracie's very first ribbon ceremony, where she started shrieking upon discovery that all the people were looking at her (no matter that they were smiling and clapping and cheering her on).
I got a little teary when I thanked Miss T (in the maroon shirt) for all the staff here has done for the girls in the last two years—Gracie especially. Their consistent and kind instruction has benefited her in innumerable ways through a few very difficult days of growing up, and the good days, too. I am very sad to say goodbye—to the staff and to the small pack of girls she runs with every week (not pictured). I assured her that gymnastics exists in Wyoming. I'm fairly sure they'll all be there with bells on.
*No comments on that, Christine.
I loved Cathy Zielske's post today when she shared an "on this day in Zielske History" photo from her photo archives. I looked in my earliest iPhoto year, 2004, and found this photo taken June 12, 2004:
I believe this was taken just after a Schuster birthday party. Someone was obviously left unattended for more than 30 seconds : )
